Career track waivers granted to 19 school districts

BATON ROUGE -- Public schools in Jefferson, Orleans, St. Charles and St. John the Baptist parishes will not offer the new "career track" high school diploma for the 2009-10 school year after they received waivers Monday from the state's top school board.

The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education granted waivers to 19 school districts, including the Recovery School District, that did not want to take advantage of the law approved by the Legislature this spring that was touted as a way to reduce the state's high school dropout rate.

The career-track diploma law was backed by Gov. Bobby Jindal but opposed by some good-government groups and education officials, including Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek. Its goal is to keep students who don't plan to attend college from dropping out of high school by steering them into more technical and vocational course work and by relaxing state academic requirements for students entering ninth grade.

Students who enroll in the new career-track curriculum would have to be at least 15 years old, have their parents' permission and take at least seven career or technical courses before graduation. Some of the classes could be offered through the Louisiana Community and Technical College System.

There is little disagreement on the need to reduce the state's 35 percent dropout rate, which ranks among the nation's highest. But educators are divided about the need to lower educational standards to meet that goal.

The new law lets students pick the career-diploma path to enter ninth grade, even if they fail the math or English portion of the eighth-grade LEAP test and score "approaching basic" on the other. Students who choose a traditional path have to score at least "basic" on one and "approaching basic" on the other.

Several members of the education board said they wanted to write the rules in a way that makes the new diploma meaningful to the students who pursue it. "I have a great fear of this becoming a dumping-ground diploma, " said John Bennett, a board member from Port Allen.

But the board rejected a recommendation from its staff that prospective career-track students be held to higher attendance and disciplinary standards than other students. The staff recommended that career-track students be admitted only if they had fewer than five unexcused absences and no more than one suspension. Other students can miss up to 20 days of school and still be promoted.

Instead of adopting the staff's recommendation, the board decided to allow local school districts to handle attendance and disciplinary matters.

. . . . . . .

Jan Moller can be reached at jmoller@timespicayune.com or 225.342.5207.